When Michigan Supreme Court Justice Maura D. Corrigan considered careers in law and medicine, her father, a doctor himself, discouraged her -- saying neither field was a proper place for women.
Michigan's 4,000 foster children should be grateful she didn't listen to him. Corrigan pursued a law career that led to serving as head of the Michigan Supreme Court. During her four years at the helm, from 2001 to 2004, Corrigan set in motion changes that have dramatically improved the way the court system handles children removed from their home because of abuse and neglect.
"Her work has been phenomenal," said Jessica Lindsey, 19, a one-time foster child who now works as a peer facilitator with other foster kids and recently organized a luggage drive so children can move to new homes with suitcases instead of garbage bags. "We have someone who has a real passion for advocating for foster youth."
Corrigan's initiatives helped locate hundreds of foster children who had run away from temporary homes, required court-appointed lawyers to meet with the children they represent and created a mentoring program for foster children, who often bounce from family to family while under the state's care.
In 2003, Corrigan started Michigan Adoption Day, held on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, which in the past two years has resulted in 584 kids finding a permanent home and a family to love.
Through it all, Corrigan has become a leading national voice for finding creative ways to get foster children out of the system more quickly and back to their birth home or into an adoptive family.
"She fixed everything," said Dominique Hutcherson-Harris, 20, who advocates for foster youth who have run away from home, and who looks to Corrigan as a mentor. "She makes me feel important, and that's what a lot of foster children need."
Corrigan graduated magna cum laude from Marygrove College and cum laude from the University of Detroit Law School in 1973. After working as an assistant prosecuting attorney in Wayne County and Chief Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan -- the first woman to hold the post -- Corrigan was appointed to the Michigan Court of Appeals in 1992. In 1998, she was elected to an eight-year term on the Michigan Supreme Court.
Throughout that time, she was also building a family with her husband, the late Joseph Grano, a distinguished professor of law at Wayne State University. Her children are Megan Grano Canale, a professional comedian, and Daniel Grano, a law student.
Corrigan was moved to look more closely at how the courts were responding to foster children in 2002, when Heather Kish, a state ward who had run away from her foster home, was found dead in Monroe County. At the time, Kish, 15, was among 200 other Michigan foster kids missing from their home placement.
"We needed to do something different than what we were doing," Corrigan said.
That same year, Corrigan ordered all state trial courts to create a docket of missing foster children to expedite the process of finding them. In the last two years, the courts have located 75 percent of runaway foster children.
"It was just a stack of files, and nothing was being done," said Corrigan.
In 2003, Corrigan was asked to serve on the Pew Commission on Children in Foster Care, which gathered some of the nation's leading child welfare experts to suggest ways to overhaul the system. Many of those recommendations are already in place in Michigan, thanks to Corrigan. "She has really made children's issues a priority," said Kathryne O'Grady, director of the state's Child Welfare Services.
Corrigan, whose law school named her its 2004 Alumnus of the Year, also serves on the boards of Vista Maria and the International Center for Healing and the Law of the Fetzer Institute.
But improving Michigan's foster care system is her primary focus.
"This is one small area where we are trying to make it different and better," Corrigan said. "We've made small improvements. But we still have far to go."
Kim Kozlowski
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